Cactuars, Instructors, and Balamb-Fish
by Antonio Calavera
Summary: Being on the faculty of Balamb Garden is an adventure on its own, but when cactuars and whip-cracking co-teachers get involved, even the most adventurous of professors might struggle to make the grade...


On the whole, it probably would have gone well if the cactuar hadn't shown up.

Drake Xanthus watched with dismay as the torama he'd been fighting reared up and bared its fangs at him. This wasn't good. These things could be nasty when they got riled up. He double-checked the protection charm he'd equipped, and then let loose a gravity spell. The big cat roared as the waves of energy threatened to flatten it. Just then, something hit him in the back. A lot of somethings. He whirled around just in time to see the remnants of his shielding collapse under a barrage of cactuar thorns. He jumped to the side, but a good portion of the salvo still managed to pierce his armor and perforate his cape. Baring his teeth, he loosed a barrage of energy pulses at his assailant. The offending cactuar let out a piteous squeal as its green flesh was charred black by the intense heat. Charging at the stricken creature, he let out a battle cry and extended his omnistaff. The modular weapon snapped out and locked to its full length, the spear-tip crystal at the end glowing an angry red as it swung toward the hapless fiend. Drake felt the blade strike home just as a huge flaming rock landed in front of him. And behind him. He had one second to realize that the next one would land on top of him before a huge weight and searing heat plowed into his back. _Meteor spell! Darn it all,_ he thought as he collapsed onto the hard Esthar dirt. As the blackness descended, he thought he heard a whip cracking.

~=\*/=~

Dr. Kadowaki smiled as the unconscious SeeD blinked awake. "Good morning, sleepyhead!" Drake sat up, rubbing his head. The infirmary? Dang, that torama really had gotten him. "How long was I out?"

"Not as long as you think," the doctor replied. She checked the bio readouts beside the bed. "You've been here for the past eighteen hours. Instructor Trepe brought you in on the Intrepid after she found you.

"I hope she wasn't hurt. I was ambushed by a cactuar and held up long enough for the torama I was fighting to fry me with a meteor spell."

"At least the scars weren't permanent," she replied. You owe Quistis. She tells me she found you just as that thing was closing for a death blow." She walked over to her desk and glanced severely at him. "You're free to go, but I advise being more careful next time. The cactuars have been turning up near the Esthar area recently."

"I'd appreciate it if you didn't let anyone know that I let a cactuar beat me up."

After leaving the infirmary, Drake moved toward the newly constructed energy research laboratory. After the battle with Ultimecia, the use of Guardian Forces had fallen into disfavor. Concerned by the memory loss they induced, Headmaster Cid had ordered more research into the nature of magic and the use of combat technology that could take the GF's place. The gleaming new Raine Loire laboratory had been the result. Built over the remnants of the parking lot and funded by Esthar's President Laguna, it was easily one of the finest places in the world in which to study magic, second only to Esthar's Odine laboratories. After his graduation, Drake had accepted an assignment from Cid himself to develop better weapons and GF-independent spells for use by SeeDs on their far-ranging missions. He loved his job. The only part he didn't like was the occasional field expeditions to gather rare materials from the monsters that still infested most of the Esthar wilderness.

As he sat down at his console, he felt the eyes of his co-workers boring into his back. Xu was the first to speak. "Got whacked, huh?"

"Um, yeah. I was ambushed and knocked out by a big, nasty…"

"Cactuar!" Xu chortled, to the giggles of the entire research department. Drake rolled his eyes in despair. "He had help! I was gang banged! Quistis, tell them!"

Quistis only looked up from her console and giggled.

Drake sighed. "Well, it was a very _big_ cactuar." He sat down resignedly as another wave of mirth swept the room.

Lunch was no better. No sooner had he sat down to his usual lunch of Balamb-fish when one of the cafeteria ladies approached him. "Here's a drink for you, sir, courtesy of your students." Drake looked over to see his students giggling at the next table. He examined his drink. Ah. Cactus juice.

He smiled sardonically as Quistis sat down in front of him. "That was sweet of you," she said.

"What is?" He said, raising an eyebrow.

"You left a rose on my console just before I got back from my morning class."

"I figured a thorny plant would be most appropriate. Seriously, Quistis, I owe you one."

"My pleasure, Drake. Just… Hey!"

One of Balamb's numerous cafeteria cats had just leapt onto the table and attacked Drake's lunch. It gobbled down the last of Drake's fish, sniffed the tumbler of cactus juice, yowled piteously, and scampered from the cafeteria. "Little cretin! That was my lunch!" Drake yelled as Quistis burst into laughter. "Sigh. We'd better be going anyway. I have that big presentation this afternoon and you have a class."

"Teaching eleven-year olds how to use a crossbow, whoopee." As she got up, a ring tumbled out of her breast pocket and rolled on the floor. "Quistis, wait!" He got on his knees, scooped up the ring, and was about to pass it to Quistis when he stopped short. "Quistis, this is a rare energy crystal ring!"

Stunned silence. It was just then that he realized that he was kneeling on the floor, in the middle of a packed cafeteria, presenting what looked very much like a diamond ring to the garden's most popular instructor.

In the chaos that instantly erupted, all semblance of order was lost as the cafeteria, the students, and most of the faculty descended into a state of near-rebellion. It took Cid, Edea, and a dozen faculty members half an hour to quell the hysteria. By then, Drake and Quistis had long escaped.

~=\*/=~

"So tell me again, just _how_ did this riot start?" Drake quailed under Cid's incredulous stare. "It happened just like I said, sir. AH-CHOO!" Cid handed him a tissue. "They thought I was _proposing_ to her, for heaven's sakes!"

"And were you?" Edea asked with a grin. "NO! We're friends! Really! She had dropped her ring and, fool that I was, I picked it up for her. AH-CHOO!"

He blew his nose before continuing. "We were mobbed. Quite an… experience."

"Can you be more specific?"

"Well, alright. It was horrible, with our students cheering and girls bursting into tears and riots starting in the back and hotdogs flying through the air and faculty members screaming for order and frantic action on all sides—"

"Okay already! So it was quite an experience. Let's stick with that. How did you manage to extricate yourselves?"

"Escape is the better word. When attempts to explain ourselves failed, she… well, Quistis' whip never leaves her side. I was as amazed as anyone when she yanked it out, flung it across the rafters, and swung _over_ the crowd and out the exit! AH-CHOO!"

Cid shook his head. "I should talk with that girl. How did _you_ get out?"

"Sir, please, it wasn't Quisty's fault."

"Quisty?"

"Instructor Trepe. AH-CHOO! Anyway, I dove under the tables and crawled out. I wasn't spotted until I'd reached the exit. I was able to dive into the water underneath the footbridge. I hid under there for - AH-CHOO! – nearly two hours before answering your call to come up here. I'm sorry for all the trouble I caused. I really didn't mean to."

"Alright. Don't worry about it. If it had been anyone other than Quistis the result would have been far more civilized… One last thing. Why are you dressed like me?" He looked at the rumpled red cardigan and oversized glasses Drake was wearing.

"Clever disguise, sir. It was the only way to get up here without inciting mutiny."

"Alright, you're free to go. Don't forget your presentation in an hour." Drake gratefully got up and left, worried over his presentation.

"Do I really look like that?" Cid asked. Unable to restrain herself any further, Edea burst into hysterical laughter.

In the (thankfully deserted) library, Drake pored over his research. The presentation itself had been ready for weeks, and the weapons and magic he'd developed worked exactly as planned, except for one thing that didn't make sense: The appearance of the cactuar. It took him less than twenty minutes to find the answer.

~=\*/=~

An hour later, Drake was in front of the entire assembled faculty. "Ladies and gentlemen, we are on the verge of a revolution in our combat tactics." He went on to explain the fruit of his labors. The spells he had been developing relied on the use of energy crystals to focus and supercharge ordinary fire spells to the point where the superheated air erupted into plasma. The resulting heat and electrical effects, combined with kinetic damage caused by a new type of gravitic acceleration spell developed at Odine Laboratories, harnessed more power than any other spell.

"That's all well and good, Drake," came a voice from the back, "But not all of us are as well versed in gravity and fire spells as you are. How is the SeeD in the field going to be able to use this spell? Wouldn't ordinary spells be more effective?"

In response, Drake pulled what looked like a polished baton from out of his pocket. "This," he said, pushing a button at the side, "is an omnistaff." The crowd gasped as the weapon extended itself. "At the tip is an energy crystal. It's not particularly powerful or rare, but its limited magic focusing properties have allowed me to create plasma pulse spells that are both effective and easy to use. In addition, the weapon itself can serve as a dagger, a club, a staff, or a spear, depending on the situation. Odine Laboratories is synthesizing more crystals for use in such devices. They can eventually be incorporated into most existing weapons. The technology is crude, and the crystals are not as pure as they could be, but with time and effort, the spells that they enable us to use could render all our current direct attack magics obsolete."

He steeled himself for the next part. "There is however, one side effect. As you know, I was ambushed outside Esthar City two days ago by, of all things, a cactuar." He noted the wry smiles on the faces of his colleagues. "Laugh if you want, but the recent reports of cactuars roaming the area cannot be denied. You can check the Esthar Scientific Journal's May issue for details. What the journal does not tell you is that these cactuars," he paused for effect, "are different."

"How so?" Asked Cid.

"For one thing, they're getting more aggressive. Cactuars generally don't attack unless their island is invaded, and they rarely use the 1,000 Thorns attack that so effectively perforated me. Second," he held up a small object, "This is one of the thorns Dr. Kadowaki pulled from my body yesterday. It's changed. Note the metallic sheen. It looks even weirder under a microscope. But that's not the craziest part. It reacts with energy crystals." He moved the thorn towards the tip of his staff, and the faculty was astonished when it started glowing. "Its atomic properties alter drastically on exposure to the crystal I carry. In fact, there was only one thing in the laboratory that it reacted more to." He searched the crowd. "Quistis, may I see your ring?"

Ignoring the stares of the crowd, Quistis strode up to the podium. "Thanks, Quisty," Drake said, taking the ring. "I should also take this opportunity to apologize for the… incident in the cafeteria earlier. However, the tempers of the student body are not the only thing this ring ignites." He smiled, brought the now violently vibrating cactuar thorn close to the ring, and then threw it to the ground, where it exploded with a resounding bang.

"Quistis? Where did you get this ring?"

Quistis stared at her ring with renewed interest. "I had it made out of a crystal that I found in Ultimecia Castle."

"That would mean that this crystal is purer than anything we have. It's what drew the cactuar to me – it wasn't hunting _me_, it was after Instructor Trepe. The mutations it underwent, and the changes in its thorns allowed it both to ambush me and to launch an attack that penetrated my shielding."

Xu piped up. "Okay, but why Esthar? Why are they clustering there and nowhere else?"

"Because Odine Laboratories, in the heart of Esthar, is the biggest energy research laboratory in the world. They have more and purer crystals there than anywhere else, and the strongest and biggest cactuars will be heading there, gaining power as they're exposed to the energies of the nearby crystals. We'd better warn them. Energy shielding using the proper frequencies will prevent cactuars from being affected by the crystals."

"It may be too late," Cid said. I got a call from Squall, Rinoa, and Irvine this morning. They reported sighting a Jumbo Cactuar on the outskirts of the city. If all the cactuars mutate to that size, the city will be in a world of trouble."

"Then we need to act quickly. Plasma spells, because they're channeled through the energy crystals, will be effective against them."

"Excellent. With that in mind, I'd like to assign you and two of our instructors to reinforce the city's defenses and tell Odine to create more omnistaffs."

"Me? Sir, I'm an energy scientist, not a fighter!"

"And you're also the only plasma mage we've got. Pick a party and get moving. The Intrepid is at your disposal."

"Yes sir."

~=\*/=~

The Intrepid made a blur of the world. A sister ship to the legendary _Ragnarok_, it had recently been purchased by Garden for use as a combat transport. It was duly modified with heavier armament and room enough to support an entire squad of SeeDs for the entire length of a mission. It was not, however, designed for supersonic travel at altitudes of less than fifty feet, but Xu had a thing for speed. High speed. Right now, they were tearing across the ocean at ridiculous velocity, heading towards Esthar. Beside Xu, in the co-pilot's chair, Quistis gripped the armrests with white knuckles and tried not to be sick. Drake, on the other hand, had very wisely fallen asleep just after takeoff and was snoozing away with a faint smile on his face. Quistis looked enviously at him, then turned to her friend. "Can't you at least try to fly at a safe speed?!"

Xu responded by firewalling the throttle.

Since any further attempt to look at the scenery would have caused her even more vertigo, Quistis diverted her attention to the radar scope. "We've got two very large objects moving in on Esthar from the south. That's gotta be them. Xu, if we can do a strafing run, it'll- LOOK OUT!"

Xu turned back to her controls just in time to see the massive sea cliff they were barreling towards. She yanked the controls backwards, sending the Intrepid into a vertical climb at top speed. Ten seconds later and three thousand feet higher, she reversed the controls and sent the Intrepid into a screaming attack dive, straight at the cactuars.

In the back, the now wide awake plasma mage yelled over the roar of the engines. "One attack run, then set us down as close as you can to any survivors!"

On the ground, the Intrepid's sonic boom shattered windows and deafened residents all across the city. "That's gotta be them. Let's go!" Said Squall. Rinoa looked over at him. "Where do we find them?"

"Just follow the screams," Irvine said, cocking his rifle.

Overhead, the Intrepid tore toward the ground. As soon as they were in range, Xu lit off all four of the ship's Gatling cannons, followed by bursts from the two energy cannons slung underneath the ship. Drake was elated to see one of the jumbo cactuars disappear in a roiling mushroom cloud. Pulling up at the last second, Xu cut the engines, fired the retro rockets, and pancaked the ship into the ground right next to the surviving cactuar. "Drake, Quistis, GO!"

Drake and Quistis needed no further prodding. They charged down the escape ramp, weapons ready. Just as Xu took off, the enraged cactuar fired a massive salvo of exploding thorns at the Intrepid. Quistis winced as the Intrepid shuddered under the barrage. The explosions left huge craters in the ship's once pristine combat armor, and molten metal ran down the ship in incandescent streams. Smoking and barely airborne, the Intrepid staggered off in the direction of Esthar Airstation, trailing flames and armor fragments in its wake. In the cockpit, a badly shaken Xu pored over the damage readouts. "The ship's trashed, guys! I'm sorry, but I'll have to land for repairs before this crate blows up! I'll tell Odine to get his crystal lab shielded. The rest is up to you!" Dismayed at the loss of their air support, Drake and Quistis turned to face an extremely irritated jumbo cactuar.

Quistis reacted first. She cracked her whip at the monster, the sharp spikes at the end cutting deep furrows into the thing's flesh. She leaped to the side just as the cactuar brought its foot down on the place she had been standing. Drake took advantage of the cactuar's distraction to level a plasma burst at the thing's head, flaying away huge swaths of organic armor. Roaring in fury, the jumbo cactuar smashed its fist into Quistis, knocking her to the ground. Drake could only watch as it towered over the instructor's prostrate form. A plasma spell at this range would probably finish her off long before the cactuar did. So, he launched the only other attack he felt he was good at.

The cactuar growled as it contemplated its next victim. Then it heard someone yelling behind it. "Yeah, that's right, I'm talking to you, ugly." The monster turned and glared at Drake. "I just wanted to tell you that that is without question the _worst_ looking handlebar mustache I've ever seen! At least the little cactuars were cute, but no, you had to mutate into some big freak thing to get your kicks! Go home to your island, you overgrown vegetable!" Sweat trickled onto Drake's brow as he taunted the monster. Behind it, a wide-eyed Quistis shook her head violently at him. Ignoring her, he kept on egging the cactuar. "I'm gonna squeeze cactus juice out of you, you prickly monstrosity, just like your buddy!"

That did it. The monster roared louder than any cactuar Drake had ever heard and charged at him. However, instead of hitting him, it lowered its head in preparation for a devastating thorn attack. Uh oh.

He had enough time to yell at Quistis to run before the thing opened fire.

Hundreds, no, thousands of thorns spewed at him. Raising his staff, he charged the energy crystal at the tip as far as it would go. Twirling the now glowing weapon, he braced himself to deflect as many projectiles as he could.

Quistis watched in horror as Drake disappeared in a deafening series of explosions. With no options left, she let out a battle cry and cracked her whip at the monster, causing another series of deep lacerations. She managed to hit it thrice before it could target her. As it stalked towards her, not noticing the impacts at all, she said a quick prayer.

Just as the cactuar started to lower its head again, something hit it on the head, nearly caving it in. Quistis sighed in relief as the very familiar gunblade-wielding figure followed up its attack with a slashing strike that nearly cut the monster in two. Behind her, Rinoa and Irvine stepped out of their Esthar hover car. "Are the others alright?" Rinoa asked. "Drake, he…" Quistis was about to choke out the rest of her reply when she heard a familiar voice pipe up. "I'm not dead yet, Quisty." She whirled around to see a battered Drake stumbling toward her. He smiled at the look on her face and said, "Shall we continue the dance?"

Irvine shook his head in wonder. "Why don't you let us handle him, eh?" He jerked a thumb at the smoking, staggering cactuar. "That would work too," Drake said, collapsing into the dry Esthar dirt.

It was all over the news the next day. Drake smiled as he read the latest edition of the Esthar Times. His harebrained idea had worked – the cactuar's thorns had detonated on proximity to his staff's crystal, causing a lot of damage, but ensuring that the lethal thorns didn't actually hit him. So far, everything had turned out perfectly, though some of the Trepies were still giving him funny looks. Cid, Laguna, and Odine had been full of praise for him, and the way things were going, he was going to have a raise and a promotion by the end of the week. The inside of the infirmary was full of gifts and tokens of appreciation, including a new Omnistaff from Dr. Odine and a presidential citation from Laguna. The best gift of all, though, was the one Quistis had given him: A large bouquet of thorny roses, accompanied by a large bottle of cactus juice.


End file.
